Einstein FTW

An artist's impression of gravitational waves generated by binary neutron stars.

Credits: R. Hurt/Caltech-JPL

"EINSTEIN SCORES AGAIN": That was the headline on a Seattle Times' post regarding today's ground (space) breaking announcement regarding the detection of gravitational waves. "Einstein was right" read the headline on  Pacific Science Center's social media post.

Today's news is a game-changing discovery in our quest to fully understand gravity, ushering in a new era for astronomy. For the first time, scientists have observed the warping of space-time generated by the collision of two black holes more than a billion light-years from Earth.

Think about that: The warping of space-time!

Over a half century ago, Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in his general theory of relativity. Since then, scientists have been attempting to detect these waves. 

Einstein pictured these waves as ripples in the fabric of space-time produced by massive, accelerating bodies, such as black holes orbiting each other. When two black holes collide, they release massive amounts of energy in the form of gravitational waves that last a fraction of a second and can be "heard" throughout the universe - if you have the right instruments.

https://youtu.be/i1-3eClv_TY

This movie shows a simulation of the merger of two black holes and the resulting emission of gravitational radiation. The colored fields represent a component of the curvature of space-time. The outer sheets (red) correspond directly to outgoing gravitational radiation, which was recently detected by the NSF’s LIGO observatories. 
Credit: NASA/C. Henze

Finally, the event of black holes colliding was detected, per the National Science Foundation (NSF) announcement that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), a pair of ground-based observatories in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana, picked up that activity. Per the report, the ‪#‎LIGO‬ project heard the hallmark "chirp" of black holes colliding, fulfilling Einstein's General Theory of Relativity - the last part of his theory that had yet to be proven!

Today, we read many articles and watched multiple videos about the discovery. We started with a great story from the British Broadcasting Company: Einstein's gravitational waves 'seen' from black holes by Pallab GhoshScience correspondent, BBC News. There are multiple videos embedded in the story. We watched them all, including an interview with physicist Stephen Hawking about what this discovery means.

We also checked out a great TED talk: What Are Gravitational Waves?

There's also a great National Public Radio article (with photos and video) here: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/11/466286219/in-milestone-scientists-detect-waves-in-space-time-as-black-holes-collide

We'll definitely be reading more on the topic in the days/weeks/months/years to come. This announcement is something I've been thinking about since, oh, around 1972-ish, when I read Madeline L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time."